Los Angeles, Calif., May 3, 2005 / 22:00 pm
With anticipation of English director Ridley Scott’s new film, Kingdom of Heaven steadily growing, the skepticism of many scholars of the middle ages is also growing.
Hollywood observers are predicting that the film will be one of the summer’s biggest blockbusters with a cost of over $150 million and an all-star cast including Orlando Bloom of Lord of the Rings fame.
A recent New York Times review said that Muslims in the film “are portrayed as bent on coexistence until Christian extremists ruin everything. And even when the Christians are defeated, the Muslims give them safe conduct to return to Europe.”
Robert Spencer, however, in a column in Front Page Magazine noted that the film, “is being touted as ‘a fascinating history lesson.’ Fascinating, maybe”, he said, “but only as evidence of the lengths to which modern Westerners are willing to go to delude themselves.”